To not want to leave baby with hard of hearing mil.

[laurG]

I am pregnant with my first child. Friends of ours are getting married when the baby is about 3 months and we hope to go. No kids are invited (which I respect ) and if we go we will need childcare. The wedding is on our home and we will need to travel to it. We have plenty of options but mil has stepped in with an early offer.

Now, I love my mil she is wonderful BUT she has profound hearing loss. She wears hearing aids ( most of the time) but this only helps to a certain extent. She can’t communicate over the phone at all, hear it ring, not cab she hear the door bell or most worryingly the smoke alarm. She can get the jist of most face to face conversations but most if her other communications are via email or text. She lives alone.

I’m just not sure I’d be happy leaving the baby with her as I don’t know how she would deal with an emergency. We won’t go to the whole wedding and will be back after the dinner but it will be the first time I’m leaving the baby probably so I am not sure it’s s good idea. Regardless, I’ve no idea how to deal with this issue. She is a lovely lady and will be a great gran. She has six other grandkids who are a lot older and her hearing was better she. They were young and her husband was alive. It’s different now. I don’t wa to offend her or deprive her but I just don’t think I can leave the baby with her.

Maybe I suggest she has s friend over to help?

I don’t have any advice to the OP but would people stop making her feel guilty for wanting to leave her child in the care of family for a short amount of time. That’s not what she asked and if she feels able and comfortable then that’s her choice.
FWIW OP your 3 month old will be fine - my MIL looked after ours on her own from a few weeks old and had him overnight for the first time 2.5 months. I don’t have any advice on your specific issues other than to say some of the suggestions made by PPs seem reasonable.

YANBU and I say that as someone with a hearing impairment. It is completely different to a deaf person looking after their own baby. MIL won't be with the baby day in day out and it's been a while since she cared for a tiny baby I'm guessing.

Also you won't be able to call for reassurance which would be a must for me the first few times you are leaving baby. I would be happy to leave baby for shorter periods when a bit older but not at that age for a whole day.

Don't you think your DH should be getting some systems in place for his MIL for her own safety?

I am hard of hearing and wear hearing aids. I couldn't hear a 'normal' smoke alarm. I have many specialist aids in the home to help me. My life is very normal and my DCs have never been in danger because of my hearing loss.

Poor woman sounds really quite isolated to be honest. Perhaps if you and your DH were able to help her improve her life a bit then perhaps you would feel more comfortable leaving your baby with her, perhaps not, but at least she may have a bit more of a 'normal' life.

Off topic maybe, but if you are happy to do it, it’s not that weird to leave a baby for a few hours with family at 3 months as long as they have become used to taking a bottle. Not all babies are the same. I found it easier the couple of times I had an event to go to when DS was a very small baby as he wasn’t clingy, he was happy getting cuddles from my mum and he had no sense of time and slept half the day! Much harder when they are older and things like separation anxiety come in, they know you aren’t there and they have more set little ‘quirks’ around bedtime that must be adhered to. I agonised over leaving him for a night at 2 years in a way I didn’t when he was a few months old.

If she does look after the baby they will no doubt be in the same room as her all day, if you want to make sure just inform her of sleep guidelines that say to keep the sleeping baby in the same room up to 6 months so she won’t leave them asleep upstairs etc. that way she’ll be able to see the whole time.

I agree with everyone that MIL needs some adaptations for her own sake. She could look after the baby but that doesn’t change the fact that at 3 months you probably won’t be ready to leave the baby anyway. It’s the kind of thing you’d want to build up to gradually, starting with an hour or so at a time, rather than leaving baby for the whole day straight away.

I also agree with Somertime
“I think there's a big difference between a deaf parent and a deaf person looking after a baby as a one off.”
A deaf parent will have equipment and strategies in place. A deaf person who is just babysitting won’t have the same set-up.

Can understand that you are anxious because you’ll be leaving your precious baby with her (and possibly for the 1st time?) but in all honestly your MIL will be more than capable to care for the baby. Her deafness does not impact on her abilities to care. I say this as a deaf mother who has been through various level of deafness with young children including a stage where I could barely hear any sounds.

At 3 months you may not want to leave a young baby regardless of who cares for baby particularly if you breastfeed as it can be hard to leave for such a long period of time.

As a family support your MIL in getting in touch with Social Services and the Fire service to look into getting aids and adaptations to assist her at home. You can get vibrating and flashing alerters for various things including baby noise alert. There are some fab gadgets out there.

She may also benefit from type talk - a telephone system where she can talk/type into a phone and read the response back from others (done via an operator).

Would also be worth supporting your MIL to consider aids to help with her hearing - go and see GP there are a number of options available these days.

Please contact your local deaf services team (may be via council or could be independent and contracted to council, depending on where you live) for some help for your MIL. She needs a vibrating smoke alarm, flashing doorbell etc and there may well be a phone she can hear on. Does she have her hearing aids checked regularly? Cleaning and retubing can make a huge difference, or they might actually not be working.

OP can you sort out the adaptations your MIL needs asap then leave your baby with her for an hour then two then four before the wedding? That way you know she can cope and the baby is fine being left all day. I've looked 2 months+ babies before and before they can crawl they are really easy to care for. After 6 months if they aren't use to you they can be difficult.

You all would be horrified if you were working mothers 25+ years ago - my mum got 3 months maternity leave from her job and then I had to go to a childminder every day. It didn't do me any permanent harm, but I'm thankful that policies have changed now. OP, your baby will be fine for a few hours without you.

Totally aside... Smoke detectors - you can get buzzing ones. Contact your MIL's local fire service who can direct her accordingly.

Are you sure about this? No way on earth I'd have left my baby at 3 months.

Your MIL sounds like a perfect babysitter though if you really do decide to go through with this.

I really don't think this is "disablist nonsense" as nobody is saying that deaf people can't have babies! I would not want to leave such a young child with someone who will have great difficulty calling for help in an emergency. My DM sounds very similar to your MIL and while she loves to help out with childcare, she can also worry about what would happen if something went wrong. I think it will be absolutely fine to leave your baby with her as long as you think about ways to deal with any emergencies that could crop up. Maybe she could have someone on standby to make any phone calls on her behalf (should the need arise) that she could text/e-mail.

You all would be horrified if you were working mothers 25+ years ago - my mum got 3 months maternity leave from her job and then I had to go to a childminder every day.

That's progress Cherry, we wouldn't want to go back to that. That's like saying we shouldn't worry about using seatbelts because there weren't any in cars when we were growing up.

had to work

No one has to go to a wedding.

No it's not. I'm not bashing progress, I said I'm glad things have changed. I'm merely pointing out that a 3 month old baby will be fine for a few hours with someone else besides a parent caring for it. I don't think telling the OP the baby is too young to be left or she wont want to leave the baby is helpful. Its not like she's off on holiday for a week sans baby, its half a day, max.

Oh my god. My DS can never have a child because he’s deaf. I better let him know his partner can dump him before she gets pregnant
Disablist nonsense

That’s a ridiculous inflammatory thing to say. There are plenty of things in the world that are actually disablist but thinking that it’s a bad idea for the OPs MIL to look after her GS in these circumstances isn’t one of them.

@nap maybe she wants to go to the wedding?

You don't stop doing fun things once you're a parent

www.actiononhearingloss.org.uk/shop/alarms-and-alerts/

I can totally understand your reluctance to leave you baby with DMIL, it is completely normal to feel that anxiety as a new mum/dad etc.

FWIW, I have quite severe hearing loss and wear hearing aids in both ears. When DD1 was first born and DH got absolutely no paternity leave I had to cope. I found I was more in tune with DD1 and had no problem knowing when she needed me etc. This is probably in part to me being her mother and a first time mum at that so I was more aware, IYKWIM.

I have included a link in this to show you what tech is available for people who have hearing loss. Your MIL will almost certainly be eligible for some tech help, maybe suggest DH go with her to an appointment and discuss it with the hearing department. This would be for MIL's safety as much as for your baby's safety if MIL ever were to look after your baby.

However plea remember that at 3mo you may actually not want to leave your baby and may be 'projecting' this on to MIL's hearing loss. Not wanting to leave you baby is not a bad thing, it's actually perfectly natural and you should never feel bad (or be made to feel bad) abut not wanting to leave your baby.

So you’ll be leaving the baby with her in daylight hours for a day.

Aside from the fact that as everyone says she should have flashing door/smoke alarms I genuinely cannot see the problem. You can text her to get updates surely?

I left my baby to go to a wedding when he was a month old, left him overnight several times before he was a year.

Your MIL will be on high alert to your baby all day. It will give her a sense of purpose when she lives in an isolated world. If she has a friend over it will act as a distraction rather than allow her to organise her whole time around the baby.

OP I totally get it. Yanbu at all. When DD was tiny I couldn't bear to leave her, and that would have been with someone i could easily contact to check she was OK and all was going well. I found DD was always fine, it was me that was upset

I think you would be wise to tell MIL that you appreciate her offer, but until baby is here you can't know how you will feel about leaving them at all, so will wait until closer to the time.

In the interim you can talk to her about aids and assistance she is entitled to - i assume you will eventually leave LO with her, even if not at 3 months, so you can couch it in terms of 'i've been thinking, we'll need to ring you when you have GC, maybe you could get a whatever so we can contact you.'

Also, the smoke alarm needs sorting as a matter of urgency - she should be easily able to get advice on what's available in her area from the council.

Are you sure about this? No way on earth I'd have left my baby at 3 months.

Yeah, go on. Try and guilt trip the OP for wanting to go to a wedding. No one asked what you would do and the OP did not ask for opinions on whether she should leave her baby, just whether she should leave it with her MIL.

This is a side of MN that is really not nice.

It depends whether she was deaf when she raised her child(ren). If she was, she will have found ways to adapt. If she wasn’t, it’ll be all new for her and I wouldn’t feel comfortable either. Maybe you can both ease into it by spending some time together when the baby is born, followed by leaving them together for an hour or so and slowly build this up?

I would never say don't leave a baby- I think it's up to the parents.

I would say that some babies hate being left, by 3 months my eldest was refusing to go to grandparents/just screaming if held by anyone except me or my husband and that carried on for years, with strong attachment to us and hating everyone else. I didn't manage to leave her without an hour of meltdown crying til she was about 2 and a half. Obviously if I'd had to have her in nursery, she'd have got over it, but leaving for a one off-day would have been awful for her and for the person left with her!

That plus the let-down of milk/soaking through clothes wouldn't have made attending a wedding at 3 months tempting for me.

On the other hand, I know people who had much more flexible babies/didn't mind the pads/were bottle feeding.

I wouldn't worry about this til the time comes nearer, planning for things after birth is a bit hit and miss.

Can one of her other grandchildren visit at the same time to help her out?

lamerde I'm not suggesting the OP 'rocks up' with the baby without discussing it first.I assume that she would.

3 month old babies are very young no matter what their size and,until you've left them with someone they don't know (and they don't know anyone apart from their parents),you don't know how they'll settle (or not).

If MiL is a bit rusty on baby care,deafness aside,I'd think carefully.